A FAMILY has paid tribute to an adventurous young woman who was found hanged in her flat by her father.

Hundreds of people have taken to Facebook to share their grief and shock after Alice Newbold was found dead at her home in Skippets Gardens on August 18.

Colleagues of the 24-year-old became concerned after Alice failed to turn up to work at Barclays Mercantile, and they contacted her father, Dan.

He went to her flat, thinking she had overslept because she had been taking sleeping pills.

The 52-year-old, of Neville Close, Cranbourne, said: “I had a phone call from one of her friends from work because it was unlike her not to turn up and no one could get hold of her. I had the keys to her flat and thought she may have taken a couple of sleeping tablets. She hadn't been sleeping well and I expected to go round there and for her to look up and say 'what's all this fuss about?'”

Alice had been texting a neighbour the night before, and had appeared to be her normal self.

At around midnight, she texted her best friend asking if she was awake - and this was the last anyone heard from her.

Dan, who has three other children, said: “It's bizarre. Something has happened between midnight and when she was found.”

He added: “Everyone is shocked. No one can comprehend or understand.”

Dan, a company director for Waltet, said he had seen Alice just the day before she died, and said: “We don't know what's gone wrong.”

His wife, Louise, said: “We are as shocked and as in the dark as everyone else.”

The 47-year-old added: “She was obviously in a dark place. She didn't like worrying people. She would have thought 'I don't want to worry dad'. She knew we would never judge her or be cross with her and would want to help but she didn't like bothering people.”

Dan described his daughter as kind, adding: “She put everyone else first. It seems like a cliché, but she was always considerate.”

Louise said her step-daughter was very responsible for her age, and wouldn't go out drinking, choosing to spend her money instead on improving her flat.

She added: “She was bubbly and funny and beautiful inside and out.”

Alice went to boarding school in Ipswich before moving to Basingstoke to live with her father, Louise and her brother Jake when she was 17, and began a job at Barclays where she has stayed since.

Dan described her caring side, and how she had taken in a cat called Brian, who suffered from feline AIDS.

He said: “She got him from Cat Protection because they were going to put him down.”

Alice drove a motorbike, and once wrote a letter to The Gazette thanking a man who helped her after she fell off her bike at the Black Dam Roundabout.

Dan said: “I bought it for a Christmas present for her two years ago. She loved it. It worried me - it was a speed machine. I kept trying to convince her to get a cruiser but she wouldn't have it.”

Alice enjoyed spending time with her family and learned to scuba dive on a family holiday in Egypt, qualifying in open water.

Dan said: “She was very adventurous. She was also a promotions girl, she had so much confidence.”

He said Alice enjoyed dressing up in fancy dress, adding: “She was funny and always up for a crack.”